Hmmm… There are a million things i could say about this song: defense, implication, the critical ground it opens up, cold facts, ardour, etc. But i’d just like to focus on what it meant for everyone in this moment below. The first and last song they ever sang.

Staying in on nights you’re not supposed to, watching Rage and having the outside brought in, feeling the gap. There’s something in me that makes me think that this disconnect i have with new music and the attractive people that make it is my fault, not theirs. If i could get over myself and every other barrier between me and a happy existence, ignore the controlled and contrived elements seemingly everything out there thrown at me has, and have the patience to put up with it, then maybe i’d be happy amongst the approved and delivered songs of the generation appointed to erase mine. But then again music has always been terrible. I’ve just not always been this old, ugly and bitter. Well, not this old at least. I haven’t found any evidence that her name isn’t a reference to Audre Lorde. Good luck in your NCEA exams.

Incredibly, i’ve not posted this Vacaciones song before. I thought i’d exhausted everything and by now any new song of theirs would be one of their lesser style explorations, but here, Volverás, is one of their best. I listened to them on a very long train/bus/train ride home last night in an effort to make myself feel good and it worked. Although whatever i offer comes through random, subconscious means, now that this song came up i’m posting it as well to maybe make you feel good.

I remember reading years ago in one of those glossy publications that write about him that this was Prince William’s favourite song. We had that in common. I wonder if he still holds it there, or if he even can remember the he he was when this song meant that much to him. He may have more important things to worry about now. Impending fatherhood, for one.

Tokyo. I have this album. It seemed incredible to me to find it, Yellow Magic Orchestra being for so long this secret phenomenon and landmark in music history kept out of the official books. They’ve climbed back somewhat now, as have most things that aren’t Kraftwerk, but still it is hard to have come across just how huge they once were, in the West as much as Japan. They played on Solid Gold! Finding this album for $5 in its original annoying Japanese plastic sleeve with that paper band around it just seemed to work against all that effort or not, intentional or not, to obscure them as the vitally important and exciting band they were. Setting history back on track. Connecting the lost then with the now it helped make.

Is the high-concepting Kylie Minogue achieved in her reinvention around the turn of the century a result of people touched by and aware of the power of pop growing up and seizing the castle. Or as much of it as they could. Injecting their inspiration into it. Something akin to people once in punk rock or metal working their way up in media organisations to positions of content shaping and delivery, helping their friends, promoting as much as possible what they think is important. Before reality sets in and they either conform wholly or never work again. There’s probably a lot of reasons, the majority of them traceable back to money and the standards and expectations of pop at the time, but i think it’s a factor. A boring one, but a factor nonetheless.